1:14 am AHST 5/26/2021

4:14 am  PDT  5/26/2021

2:14 pm  UTC 5/26/2021

Lunar Eclipse in Sagittarius

We are at another eclipse season, a lunar and a solar eclipse, two weeks apart, which occurs every six months. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Full Moon passes into the Earth’s shadow, causing us to see the Moon without the Sun’s illumination, but only in Earthshine, a combination of reflected light of all the sunsets on Earth, which gives the Moon an orangish color. This Full Moon is a SuperMoon, meaning it is the closest it gets to the Earth (in fact it’s the closest it gets in 2021). This intensifies its influence, both physically, geomagnetically, as well as metaphysically.

World tensions have been building all this year, intensified by Mars in Cancer, (aggressive emotionality) in a growing opposition to Pluto, (power issues) but also by the ongoing square between Saturn and Uranus, which will continue throughout 2021. Saturn in a fixed sign wants the structures of our society kept the same, while Uranus in Taurus brings in the need for humanity to pay attention to stewarding our Earth planet, which of course means we have to change how we do business with each other, and how we use the Earth’s resources.

At this Lunar Eclipse, the Moon in Sagittarius represents our world views, our philosophy of life, and the Gemini Sun how we communicate and implement those views day to day. Eclipses being times of shadow material to be reviewed, this one asks us to learn to communicate clearly, hopefully in peace talks between people, and even more hopefully in the awareness that bombs and guns and violence do nothing more than perpetuate generational traumas further into our future.

Eclipses always occur at the Nodes of the Moon, which astrologically and metaphorically represent our karmic path, the South Node being where we’ve come from, and the North Node representing where we are headed, and what needs to be integrated. Since we’re dealing with shadow material here, the South Node in Sagittarius, conjoined the Moon indicates we’re dealing with the emotional attachments to the philosophies we’ve held for generations. This includes beliefs about war (“humans are naturally warlike”), and about money (“there will always be the rich and the poor”) but most importantly about our relationship with Universal concerns, issues of spiritual and religious materialism (“our God is the only God”). Millions of people over the centuries have lost their lives due to “crusades,” pogroms, enslavement, etc., all justified by belief systems, but which perpetuate the transfer of trauma from generation to generation. Part of “eating our shadow” is digesting its contents, which requires the humility to realize we’ve been in love with violence, with murder and war stories, with the “nobility” of executing perpetrators, not realizing that perpetrators are themselves traumatized, part of a pattern of a long history of generational and cultural violence.  

Gemini and the Sun at the North Node ask us to rethink the ways in which we interact with different beliefs, to negotiate and find ways to live with and even embrace our differences. And also, since Mercury rules Gemini, to see where the lies and trickery have become acceptable in our society, where hate speech is seen as powerful or strong, “telling it like it is”.   

The ruler of Sagittarius is Jupiter, and this Full Moon is in a charged T-square formation with Jupiter, which forms right angles to the Sun/Moon opposition. Jupiter, having recently entered Pisces, will be in this sign only briefly, but is giving us a taste of a longing for insight, for spiritual transcendence if you will. Humanity has little time left to change its ways, and Jupiter’s “pushy” presence at this Full Moon posits that we look at our collective and individual shadow in ways that are helpful and inclusive, rather than involving shame or blame and finger-pointing. When shadow is on our plate, lies and hatred often surface and become more blatant, and those who draw the most attention for being the most outrageously poisonous are the ones who are showing us what needs to be reckoned with. We all share shadow collectively, just as we all share humanity’s blessings. No one is exempt from the capacity for violence and hatred.

Pisces and Gemini are dual signs, with the facility to see the positive and negative polarities as part of an entirety. This is necessary for integration of dark and light energies within us. Perhaps with Mars in a harmonious trine to Neptune at this eclipse moment, we can see a way through to living our ideals, to actually take them off their high shelf and use our energies to make them functional, desirable, essential, to life on Planet Earth. This means also dismantling the engines of war, of violence, hatred and enslavement, and calling to task those who derive profit and power from it.  The asteroid Pallas Athena is also closely conjoined with Neptune at this eclipse juncture, a conjunction that happens every 5 years. This powerful archetype of feminine wisdom is now in the depths of our dream world, able to inform us how to choose our battles wisely, as well as how to weave together (she is the goddess of crafts) the opposites of polarity in meaningful ways.

Mercury, already slowing down, (have you noticed?) will go retrograde on May 29^th, and this period will last until June 22^nd. It will spend double its usual time in Gemini, there until July 11th, further accenting our need for increased scrutiny of our speech, our thoughts, and watching how our words create the worlds we live in.